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For most actors, stealing a mere fragment of a moment of a scene from an incandescent talent like Denzel Washington would be a career coup. Even when the power dynamic of a scene favors the other actor, Washington is the guy we're going to watch, the puckish, pissed-off ball of energy who refuses to bend the knee or cede a centimeter of ground. Washington wins scenes even when his character loses.

So consider what Delroy Lindo does throughout the first act of Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" to be a tap-dance-on-water miracle. As West Indian Archie, a Harlem numbers kingpin who takes the cocky young Malcolm under his wing, Lindo holds Washington in check. Archie has accrued significant power in a cutthroat realm, and he knows how to wield it. He's a man of stillness and meticulously measured menace. He studies this antsy, ambitious kid with cautious amusement; he clocks his potential,...

To the non-obsessive layperson, the Grateful Dead are not exactly an obvious source of inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, which HBO adapted for TV as Game of Thrones. For a Deadhead, appreciating the art of the Grateful Dead is usually a relaxed experience, filled with pleasant vibes, the sounds of Jerry Garcia’s improvised guitar solos, and perhaps the occasional acid-induced hallucination. But for a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, the experience of enjoying Martin’s epic fantasy story involves gruesome violence, foreboding omens, and the occasional incestuous relationship. Watch an episode of Game of Thrones: it’ll probably be dark, tense, and funny (if there’s a scene featuring Tyrion or Bronn). Watch a Grateful Dead concert and it’ll be either blissful or boring (depending on your taste in music).

So how exactly did the...

Actor Bernard Hill, known for iconic roles, has passed away at 79 according to his agent Lou Coulson. Born in Manchester in 1944, Hill featured in British dramas and was praised for gritty performances. His recent role in The Responder with Martin Freeman airs today on BBC.

Actor Bernard Hill, who became known for many character roles, including King Theoden in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and as Captain Edward Smith in James Cameron's Oscar-winning Titanic, passed away on May 5, according to his agent, Lou Coulson. The actor was 79-years-old.

Hill was born in the working-class neighborhood of Blackley, Manchester, England, in 1944, and grew up as part of a Catholic miner's family, far away from the glamor of Hollywood. His journey into acting began at Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama, which was soon followed by many television roles in the mid-1970s.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers...

As Hollywood mourns the death of Bob Rafelson, the director of “Five Easy Pieces” and an essential member of the New Hollywood movement who helped launch the careers of Jack Nicholson and Peter Bogdanovich, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers (and film historians) has paid his respects. In a new statement, Martin Scorsese spoke about the impact that Rafelson had on the world of cinema, both through the art he created and the way he helped usher in a new business model for artistic filmmaking.

“Bob Rafelson was a pivotal figure in the history of cinema, American cinema most of all, and he was a bridge between two eras in Hollywood moviemaking,” Scorsese wrote. “He was literally born into the old Hollywood — his cousin was the great screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, one of Lubitsch’s key collaborators — and he was one of the people who made the New Hollywood possible,...

Grateful Dead co-founders Phil Lesh and Bob Weir began a three-city, six-show run, dubbed the Bobby and Phil Tour, with a pair of sold-out gigs at Radio City Music Hall on Friday and Saturday. In classic Dead fashion, the concerts moved between magical jams and charming discombobulation, never losing their sense of real-time fun. During their debut as a “duo,” Lesh and Weir were augmented on and off by percussionist Wally Ingram and, for Saturday’s thrilling, improv-packed second set, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio. But even with the guests, the...

Roger Deakins finally has his Oscar!

After 14 nominations in the category, the celebrated director of photography has finally won Oscar’s Best Cinematography trophy.

Deakins, 68, accepted the award on Sunday at the 90th annual Academy Awards for his work on Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.

He beat out fellow nominees Hoyte Van Hoytema (Dunkirk), Bruno Delbonnel (Darkest Hour), Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water), and Rachel Morrison (Mudbound).

“I really love my job,” Deakins said in his speech. “I’ve been doing it a long time, as you can see. But one of the reasons I love it is the people I work with.

It’s difficult to find an aspect of popular culture that Hugh Hefner didn’t influence during his long, remarkable life. Spanning journalism, television, film, fashion and, of course, sexuality, his impact on music is one of the least heralded aspects of his legacy. Over the course of two seasons, Hefner used his weekly syndicated variety show, Playboy After Dark, as a platform for a broad spectrum of artists.

Psychedelic sounds from San Fransisco (courtesy of the Grateful Dead), early heavy metal (provided by Deep Purple), country-tinged balladeers (thanks to Linda Ronstadt and the Byrds) and old-school crooners (like the...

They don’t make ’em like this any more, and the original TV spots for James Gray’s accurate retelling of history almost didn’t know how to sell it. Charlie Hunnam spends his life trying to solve a riddle of the Peruvian rainforest, in between fighting in WW1 and dealing with class prejudice. Yup, one could say the picture was filmed in a ‘classic’ style . . . can a show like that find an audience these days?

The Lost City of Z

Blu-ray

Broadgreen / Amazon Studios

2016 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 141 min. / Street Date July 11, 2017 / 34.99

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Edward Ashley, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Clive Francis, Murray Melvin.

Cinematography: Darious Khondji

Film Editor:John Axelrad, Lee Haugen

Original Music: Christopher Spelman

From the book by David Grann

Produced by Dede Gardner, James Gray, Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner

Written for the Screen and Directed by James Gray

More...

Some very sad news is being reported today, as actor Peter Vaughan has passed away at the age of 93.

BBC News and multiple other sources shared this statement from Vaughan's agent, Sally Long-Innes:

"This is to confirm that very sadly Peter Vaughan passed away at approximately 10.30 this morning. He died peacefully with his family around him."

Many modern-day viewers know Vaughan as Maester Aemon on Game of Thrones, but his screen career stretches back to the ’50s.

A highly-regarded character actor, Vaughan's credits include Village of the Damned (1960), Two Living, One Dead, Die! Die! My Darling!, Haunted, Treasure Island (1968), Sudden Terror, Porridge, Brazil, Mountains of the Moon, Dandelion Dead, Murder Most Horrid, The Crucible (1996), and the aforementioned Game of Thrones.

Vaughan's legacy will surely live on through the people he worked with, the fans who admired his work, and his incredible presence onscreen. Our thoughts go out to Vaughan's...

Harry Potter fans have something to truly get excited about this morning. Franchise creator and book author J.K. Rowling has revealed the name and location of the American school of Witchcraft and wizardry located in this fantasy world. That's not all, though. She's also announced that there are a total of 11 magic schools in this universe, including the famed Hogwarts Academy.

J.K. Rowling has written the script for the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which takes place years before Harry ever arrived at Hogwarts. And the action takes place in the United States. New York to be exact. In expanding this universe for the big screen and other forms of media, J.K. Rowling shared a series of posts on her Harry Potter website Pottermore. There she states the following.

"The wizarding populations of most countries choose the option of home schooling. Occasionally, too, the magical...

Omar Sharif in 'Doctor Zhivago.' Egyptian star Omar Sharif, 'The Karate Kid' producer Jerry Weintraub: Brief career recaps A little late in the game – and following the longish Theodore Bikel article posted yesterday – below are brief career recaps of a couple of film veterans who died in July 2015: actor Omar Sharif and producer Jerry Weintraub. A follow-up post will offer an overview of the career of peplum (sword-and-sandal movie) actor Jacques Sernas, whose passing earlier this month has been all but ignored by the myopic English-language media. Omar Sharif: Film career beginnings in North Africa The death of Egyptian film actor Omar Sharif at age 83 following a heart attack on July 10 would have been ignored by the English-language media (especially in the U.S.) as well had Sharif remained a star within the Arabic-speaking world. After all, an "international" star is only worth remembering...

Two films, made decades apart, that deserve to be better known are playing on Turner Classic Movies this week: King Vidor’s The Stranger’s Return (1933), which airs on Tuesday, and Bob Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon (1990), on Friday. I’ve written about the Vidor film before, most recently when it screened at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival. I first saw it decades ago, when William K. Everson showed a 16mm print, and fell in love with it then. It’s a surprisingly adult film for its time, and showcases Miriam Hopkins, Lionel Barrymore, and Franchot Tone in tailor-made roles, alongside a fine supporting cast. Vidor never mentioned it in his autobiography, and I always...

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I've spent the better part of the last few months diving into the catalog of cinematographer Roger Deakins, starting with Michael Radford's "Nineteen Eighty Four" and soaking up each and every indelible image he's given us over the last three decades. I imagine I'll write something up soon enough, as he'll surely be in the thick of things again this season with his work on Angelina Jolie's "Unbroken," but in the meantime, here's a delicious video exploration of some of his work. The video — pieced together by Plot Point Productions — leans heavily on the latter-day stuff. Lots of "No Country," "Jesse James," "Revolutionary Road," "Jarhead," "True Grit," etc. Probably that's because all of those are available in higher definition formats, but it would be great to see more of the striking imagery from "Sid and Nancy" or "Kundun" or little-seen stuff like "Mountains of the Moon" slip in.

Feature Ryan Lambie 11 Mar 2014 - 05:39

In the late 80s, Carolco was one of the biggest studios in Hollywood, but by 1995, it was gone. Ryan charts its dramatic rise and fall...

Paul Verhoeven is not a happy man. It's 1994, and the Dutch director of (among other things) RoboCop and Total Recall is in a pivotal meeting with executives at Carolco Pictures. They're in the boardroom to discuss Crusade: a lavish, $100m historical drama described as Spartacus meets Conan.

With a script by Walon Green (The Wild Bunch, WarGames), and a cast headed up by Arnold Schwarzenegger, it sounds like the kind of star-filled, opulent film Carolco Pictures is famous for making. The supporting cast includes Jennifer Connelly and Robert Duvall. The script is vibrant and brash. There are massive sets being built in rural Spain. But privately, Carolco's bosses are anxious; they have another hugely expensive project in the works...

Odd List Simon Brew Ryan Lambie 19 Sep 2013 - 07:20

From dramas to action and everything in between, here's our pick of 20 underrated films from 1990...

Think back to the big films of 1990, and you'll probably immediately come up with things like Ghost, the year's top-grossing film, or maybe Home Alone, which made a star out of the young Macaulay Culkin.

If you're into sci-fi or action, you might pluck Total Recall, Back To The Future Part III or even Die Hard 2 out of your memory banks. But what about all those movies that didn't make it into the year's top 10 ranking films? As ever, there's a huge number of duds and forgettable flops, but there were plenty of films that were wrongly overlooked, too.

That's where this list comes in, which aims to shed a bit of light on 20 films that were either unfairly overlooked by audiences at the time, or...

Odd List Simon Brew Ryan Lambie

From dramas to action and everything in between, here's our pick of 20 underrated films from 1990...

Think back to the big films of 1990, and you'll probably immediately come up with things like Ghost, the year's top-grossing film, or maybe Home Alone, which made a star out of the young Macaulay Culkin.

If you're into sci-fi or action, you might pluck Total Recall, Back To The Future Part III or even Die Hard 2 out of your memory banks. But what about all those movies that didn't make it into the year's top 10 ranking films? As ever, there's a huge number of duds and forgettable flops, but there were plenty of films that were wrongly overlooked, too.

That's where this list comes in, which aims to shed a bit of light on 20 films that were either unfairly overlooked by audiences at the time, or have faded rapidly from general discussions about cinema.

Anybody who has ever been to a high school reunion (and I’ve been to my share) will tell you that the calendar and the clock can be incredibly cruel (particularly when combined with the long-term effects of gravity, but let’s not go there).

Time punishes creative works as well. Some work grows dated, stale, stiff. Time and the evolving form of the given art leaves a once vibrant and exciting work behind looking dead and obsolete.

More cruel, perhaps, is work that is simply…forgotten. Not for any good reason. Good as it was, maybe it was simply not successful enough to lodge very deeply in the popular consciousness; working well enough in its day, but soon lost among the ever-growing detritus of a lot of other pieces of yesterday.

Movie music is particularly vulnerable to the cruelties of time. Outside of the form’s devotees, it rarely...

The 11th annual Lausanne Underground Film Festival is packed to the gills with outrageous cinema from all over the world, featuring several filmmaker retrospectives and movies screening in competition at several locations on Oct. 17-21.

The big guest of honor this year is the legendary John Waters, who will be attending the fest with several of his own classics, such as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, as well as showing some of his favorite B-movie inspirations, such as William Girdler’s blaxploitation demonic possession flick Abby, Armando Bo’s Argentinian sexploitation Fuego, Robinson Devor’s controversial bestiality doc Zoo and more. Plus, Waters will perform his acclaimed “This Filthy World” one-man show.

Other Luff special guests include Christoph Schlingensief, the confrontational German filmmaker of 100 Years of Adolf Hitler, The German Chainsaw Massacre, The 120 Days of Bottrop and more; Richard Stanley, the South African genre filmmaker of the cult...

From performing Coleridge's maritime epic to creating a coastal art-and-poetry installation with glowing tents, True Blood star Fiona Shaw is on a mission to make us love language.

Given the context for my interview with Fiona Shaw, my central question – what is your favourite love poem? – doesn't seem especially tricky or prying. We meet to talk about Peace Camp, an art collaboration with director Deborah Warner and composer Mel Mercier, for which Shaw has been darting across the UK, imploring people to record their favourite love poems – and accosting well-known actors she's bumped into at airports. "Alun Armstrong! Please, will you do it?" She has recorded 570 poems in total, with voices from Cornwall, Northumberland, Wales, the Isle of Skye, and everywhere in between.

And yet Shaw is not easy to pin down. Her words keep hurtling off through exclamations, exhortations, then collapsing in laughter. She revises herself regularly, shouting into my dictaphone: "Don't write that!

Weighing in at just over 800 pages, A Game of Thrones is full of plots and sub-plots, primary and secondary (and tertiary and ancillary) characters, major and minor leitmotifs, and foreshadowing of foreshadowing – to say it is a dense narrative is an understatement in the extreme, particularly considering its status as only the inaugural chapter of a much larger tale. This column (It Is Known: An Analysis of Thrones) will act as a companion piece to both series, novel and television, analyzing each installment’s character beats and plot points as well as scrutinizing the transition from page to script. What it will not do is spoil the story; the hope and intent is elucidation, not ruination.

With one further episode this season, and a second year already greenlighted (and the much-anticipated and oft-delayed fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, due to release immediately following the season finale), such illumination will be needed.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Christopher Nolan's Inception Inception's Wally Pfister, not True Grit's Roger Deakins as many had been expecting, was the feature film winner at the 2011 American Society of Cinematographers Awards held on Sunday (Feb. 13) night at the Hollywood & Highland Grand Ballroom in Los Angeles. "Presenter Diane Lane was def. surprised by Pfister's Asc win," tweeted TheWrap's Steve Pond. "I think she figured there was a reason ([husband] Josh Brolin/True Grit) they chose her." Deakins had won a BAFTA earlier in the day (evening in London), and shortly before Pfister was announced as the Asc's winner Deakins had been handed the Society's Lifetime Achievement Award. Among the veteran cinematographer' credits are Mountains of the Moon, Dead Man Walking, Thunderheart, Fargo, A Beautiful Mind, and No Country for Old Men. It's unclear whether Deakins will repeat his BAFTA feat or if Pfister will repeat his Asc feat at...

All The Critics Love You In [Name Of European City Here]:

"It is just a little bit weird that if I appear in Europe, anywhere, and I go often—to teach, to festivals, when and where there are retrospectives of my work (I’ll go almost anywhere I’ve never been before, because I like to travel)—that I find a great deal of interest in my work. On the other hand these pictures are never discussed, never shown, nor are the other filmmakers involved in them...in America. Which led me to develop a kind of 'Fuck America' attitude. They don’t want to have anything to do with me, I won’t have anything to do with them."

—Director Bob Rafelson, in conversation with the author, 4/9/10

"[Henri] Langlois had been struck with admiration for Hawks in 1928—in the silent days, the antiquity of film—when, at the age of 15, he saw Louise Brooks...

Today we welcome a new addition to the royally watched: Charles Wesley Mumbere, who for several years worked as a nurse's aide in Maryland and Pennsylvania, has been crowned the king of the Rwenzururu district of western Uganda, or, officially speaking, King of Uganda's Mountains of the Moon. The 56-year-old's coronation is part of the restoration of the Rwenzururu Kingdom, which was banned in 1967. In England, the Duke of York has apparently invested in a nine-hole backyard golf course at his Royal Lodge residence. A notoriously fanatic golfer, Prince Andrew has a handicap of four, which means he qualifies for the professional golf circuit. Considering this, perhaps his backyard golf getaway is just, err, par for the course.